Mine is starting to get some of those spots too. With no basis for this, I’ve just decided it’s end of season and I don’t care…most of the cherry trees around me are 50-75% defoliated by now.
I spray as light as possible, Delegate, Nova, Sulphur, etc - mostly earlier in the season, so I see very little codling moth and scab damage.
But I’m seeing some apples with tiny tunnel damage and a pin sized scar on the skin. The flesh damage is barely noticeable and hard to get a good pic.
I have trouble with a red weevil type bug but they cause a lot worse damage. It seems to be worse on early Sunrise apples and trees along a hedgerow with a couple wild apple trees.
Is it a bug or a very mild scab infection?
1 Like
Looks a bit like bitter pit spots to me but there wouldn’t be “tunnels”. If you skin one are there corky spots under the damage?
No, the apples are perfectly crisp and fresh. The tunnels are like a tiny worm sized about 0.5mm bored a random hole that the apple mostly healed over, but I never see actual insects. Damage doesn’t necessarily connect to the core.
I will be harvesting a bunch tomorrow, will try to get betters pics.
1 Like
If you put in the coldest spot of your refrigerator, you might be able to diagnose it better, this year I bought 75 or so apples from an organic orchard and most of them had Apple Maggot Fly. I can’t believe I didn’t notice how bad it was. I saw some, but not enough to keep me from buying them. The damage is really obvious after hard refrigeration for a few days. The last, peeled apples were refrigerated since September 6th. I felt kind of sick realizing I had previously eaten a couple dozen of these apples when the damage seemed minimal.
3 Likes
Can you break this down a little more for the new growers? Those one things are the maggots? Why did refrigeration make it more obvious?
I can’t say that I’ve run into them yet. Or i have and they were not notable. Hopefully the former but I don’t seem to have suffered so the latter wouldn’t be awful.
Apple maggot fly. Adult looks like a fly, lays eggs in June or July. The little worms spend a long time in the apple, and are sometimes still there when you cut into the apple. I’ve had minimal damage on my fruits despite no specific sprays for them. I think I did a Captain Jack’s spray the first week of June so that might have done it. Last year I only sprayed 3x, including fungicide. These apples were already damaged, but practically freezing them (in my 30 degree kimchi refrigerator) and then placing them on the counter for an hour or two seems to have accelerated the sinking of the entrance holes.
2 Likes
Any idea what is causing this damage to Meyer lemon seedlings? The smaller one had leaves abruptly eaten (entire leaves disappeared) towards the end of summer, regrew bushy, but then all these grey spots and holes appeared in the last month. It was directly next to a clementine seedling (unaffected) and a taller Meyer lemon seedling that I’m just now noticing is showing some of the same damage. I can’t see any evidence of scale or spider mites and I’ve looked with lights. I don’t need the most damaged one and will be ditching that, but want to stop whatever is happening to the better seedling.
Bushy, most damaged seedling:
Healthier seedling starting to show damage
Clementine seedling that is largely unaffected though does have two leave that look eaten from the outer edge
